


the only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage

by swallows (toska)



Category: Persona 4, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Digital Devil Saga, Cannibalism, Creative License being used, Friendship, Gen, Souji-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 05:39:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toska/pseuds/swallows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Souji-centric: "You aren't the hero, not this time around."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [samarecarm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/samarecarm/gifts).



**the only difference between martyrdom and suicide is press coverage**

.

“So you missed being hero so much that you are willing to become the villain?” Adachi laughed and Souji clenched his fists.

“Well, look at it this way kid. You are injecting a demon virus in your skin; you’re on your way to being a fucking cannibal, Seta! I’m not even that crazy and I’m the one stuck in this hellhole.” Adachi said, knocking on the glass between them.

 “What’s the difference if a persona is the true self and the atma is the true character?”  He argued.

“For one, these _atmas_ ,” Adachi’s face crunched up at the sound of the word, “don’t mean anything. They aren’t anything like those fucking Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards that you and your friends used to summon. Christ, I can’t believe that I’m the only one you’ve talked about this to.”

And truthfully, Souji can’t believe it either. But he’s kept contact, with the ex-detective throughout the years. Not much of a friendship, but more like comrades. Honesty only comes with your double and Adachi is his mirror, the reflection that’s moving his left hand, while Souji moves his right.

He can’t tell his friends about this— they would begrudge him, worry about it, do something stupid like joining something that they can’t handle. Facing your shadow self? No problem, after all it is still you. You can control it, but a demon?

Not a chance.

“Adachi,” he starts, “the Junkyard, the atmas, the demons doesn’t it all connect to what you believe in?”

“Don’t compare my life philosophy to trash like that. What’s there is a freak show experiment.  And I did it because I was bored. I was bored, I was tired and no use in prolonging the chaos that the future will bring—” Adachi’s eyes widened in understanding.

“I’m bored too.”

.

“So you agree to the terms and conditions, Seta-san?” The man asks again.

“Yes,” he says.

“That’s great,” the man says. “Since you are one of the first six volunteers to sign up— that automatically makes you team leader.”

Souji nods, and just signs the document. “You are quite young, too. There’s a young man a few years older than you, but you are still the youngest leader in the Junkyard. You’re brave, too. Most of the people here would refuse to do this, it’s great having young man take leaps like these for science.”

“For science,” Souji agreed. The words tasted foreign on his tongue, unfamiliar and untrue.

The man got up and Souji followed suit. “Would you like a new name or would you like to keep your old one?”

“My original one,” Souji replies.  The man quirks an eyebrow, “Really now? You know what they say, “Pen names are masks that allow us to unmask ourselves” He quotes.

Souji doesn’t bother to reply. Its silent the rest of the walk. He never needed a pen name, not when he’s a fool able to put on many masks for many different people.

He doesn’t need one, not now. Not ever.

.

The nurse in front of him is really beautiful. (Honestly, she reminds him of Uehara-san, with the lightness of her smile and the sadness of her smile.)

“The restraints are there for the injection, the virus is quite painful. It’s better to have those injected held down.” She explains, gathering equipment together. “You really are cute, a really pretty boy.” She laughs. “Such a shame you’ll do this— but at least I’ll be seeing you quite often. Nineteen is old enough for me.” She says, adding a little wink.

 _25 is old enough_ , he wants to say, but bites his tongue instead. He doesn’t feel courageous enough, not like how he was in high school. But that’s why he needs to do this. So he can remember how it feels to be brave again, so he can remember how to be human again. _At the price of your humanity?_ The voice in the back of his head asks, sardonic.

The nurse flutters around the room, before tightening the restraints. “Take care, darling.” She says. Her eyes look sad, pitiful.

Eyes averted, he nods, lips curving slightly.

She injects the needle in his arm and suddenly he is burning.

.

When he opens his eyes, he’s in a bare room. It reminded him of his room in Inaba, with nothing but the bare essentials.

Donning fitted clothing, _battle armor_ — he thought.

He passed out again.

.

He woke up surrounded.  

Several faces crowded around his leader, and he sees others.

Others still asleep, others still awake.

Others dead.

The voice in his head is fresh, yet familiar. Devour it was saying.

 _Devour_.

.

His group, the ones that survived is full of people with empty eyes.  He supposes his are just as empty.

“Hello,” one says, a girl, Argilla. Souji looks at her with her pink hair and the jagged scar and wonders what the story behind it is. The others just nod in greeting.

He nods back.

These are his new comrades, just as if they were the new investigation, new social links.

“We must get to Nirvana, Seta,” one says— and Souji notes his clouded green eyes, all empty. A tactician, a man named Gale.

He’s not sure how he knows their names, or how he knows there names. Must be part of the program, with the data, he supposes.  When Heat offers him a hand up, he accepts it.

He doesn’t look back.

 _What is there to look back to?_ A voice in his head asks and honestly, he doesn’t know. There is nothing, but Nirvana.

All they have to do is look ahead.

.

The buildings here reminded him of all the dungeons in the TV World. Despite Izanagi’s hungry roars, he feels as if nothing has changed.

It almost feels normal. 

.

“Are we murderers?” Argilla asked him once, fiddling with her hands in her lap. She leaned her head against his and somehow, she reminded him so much of Yukiko, with that faraway look in her eyes and that urge to leave this place they call home.

 (He wonders how she is, if she’s still a dreadful cook, if she’s happy there with Chie and the inn. She probably is. And what about the others? What about Yosuke, what about Chie, Kanji, Rise, Naoto and Teddie? He wonders what his family thinks about this, about him.

He’s off comforting some girl, telling her that she’s not a killer, not a cannibal— it’s not called cannibalism here, it’s a way of life.)

“We’re going to reach Nirvana,” he finally says, “and this whole thing will be past us. And besides in the end this world isn’t real.”

“But the virus is.”

.

Something happened to the virus.  At the Karma Temple, he saw it. The virus it killed people, it destroyed people. Someone hacked the virus, someone destroyed the virus. Strange how someone—no something— named Angel, could be the reason of so much destruction, the reason why the virus is all mad.

“Everything here is compiled of data,” she said. “Data and programming, changed every day by the choices that people make.  Nothing is as real as you believe,” she said.

“Go to Nirvana for the truth.”

.

He’s not so sure if any of this is real anymore.

Were any of them real, could he trust them to be real and not being made of code— doing what their program demanded? Was his brainwaves being changed, was he being changed, is he the bad guy? The questions kept firing, one by one and Adachi’s words echoed in his mind as he crushed medicine between his teeth. He swallowed.

Bitter, he thinks.

_“So you missed being hero so much that you are willing to become the villain?”_

(They are poisoning your persona, the voice in his head says. Poisoning it, degrading it, turning it into a monster. Look how far a god has fallen, it says. No, no— he protests. They are only evolving it, adjusting it to benefit the future. After all what is the difference between a persona and an atma, if a persona is the true self and the atma is the true character?

_So a species of cannibalistic demons are actually going to help the future?_

The voice sounds a lot like Adachi’s actually and Izanagi—)

Izanagi stirred within him, rumbling and banging from his rib cage. Hungry, it seems to be saying.

 _Hungry_.

Nothing to curve the hunger, but barely filling scraps of meat.

Izanagi howled in his mind, the screams still ringing in his ear long after he stopped. Izanagi was demanding, and sometimes Souji thought that Izanagi would never be satisfied, unless he devoured himself.

The medicine was bitter, really bitter— he thinks as he swallows another one for good measure.

They were almost there after all, with enough Chewing Souls and Rations to last them.

.

They awoke with a start.

A woman’s voice greets them; it’s that same nurse from before. “Welcome back,” she says.

“Welcome to Nirvana.”

.

The real world wasn’t safe for them anymore. “More like, not safe for _them_ , anymore.” Heat snorts, motion his head towards the dimly lit **EXIT** sign.

(The flesh-eaters, they called them. It sounded better than cannibal, he supposed. Cannibal sounded harsher and emptier, though flesh-eater had certain sharpness to it, something eerie about the name, eerie and literal. So maybe it wasn’t as nice it wasn’t as nice as he thought.

But anything was better than cannibal.)

.

It wasn’t like the virus leaked and people are being infected left and right, because they are not. It’s the fact that _they_ , the Embryon, survived.  “Everyone else is dead,” they told him. “Dying in the AI, meant dying in real life. The AI was directly connected to the virus after all; it’s a place to channel the virus and to control it. Otherwise, we would have monsters in the streets.” The man who explained this to them laughed, as if it were all a joke. A game that they were watching, a movie you would watch on the SciFi channel. The man checked his watch and left them with these final words, “The dead are dead.”

Argilla looked pale.

“The dead are dead,” she repeated. “The dead are dead, their brains dead and their souls crushed.” She was shaking as she repeated these words. And Souji could see her atma glowing, and her arms trembling, she’s going berserk and— “The dead are dead, their brains dead and their souls—”

“Argilla stop.” Gale ordered. “We will strategize; after all they will not keep us here forever. Whoever did this project had the intention to watch us all die trying to reach Nirvana. He did not suspect any of us would actually win, and reach Nirvana. We will treat this like another mission, we will plan and we will conduct this mission with ease.”

After seeing Argilla calm down, Gale turned towards him. Heat and Cielo watched in interest.

“Seta—”

“My name is Souji.” He didn’t know why he said that, but it felt right. It was a sense of comradeship and by the looks of others faces it was the right thing to say.

“Souji,” Gale tested out the name.

“Souji,” He confirmed and he could have sworn he saw Gale’s lip curve into a smile and it felt like how it did back then, with his team staring back at him with ready eyes.

Comrades, he thinks.

Comrades.

.

“I once saved the world from eternal fog and despair.”

Heat scoffed, “I’ll believe that when you do it again.”

“Can you tell us more about your friends?  From back then. ” Cielo asked.

He could feel his expression increase as he spoke. Back in the Junkyard, there were no times to reminisce and talk about the past, not much need when everyone only had one thing on their mind. To reach Nirvana and survive.

.

“We’re going to break out of here, one day.” He said, behind the walls they put them in for _safety_. (Their safety obviously, the Embryon could take care of themselves. And it seems easy for them to joke about his tribe’s condition, when there is a barrier between.

The guard scoffed, “Really, now?”

Heat laughed, chiming in, “The three of us killed tribes just on our own. Now imagine the five of us. These scraps of animal meat are still leaving me hungry. You must be deluded to think if we’re satisfied.”

“We are going to make you fix us; you created us with the strength of gods. We will not hesitate to use it.” Argilla said, her voice wavering.

“Our leader here is the god of creation, if you knew what’s best for you; you would stop while you had the chance and do the smart thing.” Cielo said, and Gale agreed with an, “Affirmative.”

Glancing around, Souji knew that they weren’t the bad guys, yet. Adachi was wrong, the truth was he didn’t miss being the hero, or that he was bored. The truth is that Inaba and what occurred there was nothing but a distant memory, and he hasn’t talked to them in years, aside from Adachi (and he’s not even sure if Adachi counts.) The truth is that he has to find himself; he has to learn how to be human again. Tatsumi Port Island may have turned him into one of the Lost, and he may have found himself in the town of Inaba— but his true self, his shadow?  His humanity?

Here, he was finding it again.

Here, _they_ were finding it again.

And all it took was a deep breath, as his skin glowed.  And he watched with glowing eyes as the others followed suit.

Izanagi spoke in his mind, _devour_.

Souji grinned, because it’s time.

.

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S TIME TO BEGIN, ISN'T IT? I GET A LITTLE BIT BIGGER, BUT THEN I'LL ADMIT IM JUST THE SAME AS I WAS IM NEVER CHANGING WHO I AM
> 
> um ahem sorry about that- that song inspired nothing by the way
> 
> but yeah, everything here is just raw and im just more excited to get this out more than anything.
> 
> the original concept was: In which Souji Seta signs up to be one of the testers of the demon virus in the Ai, despite the consequences. "You missed being the hero so much that you are willing to destroy yourself."


End file.
